Author: Kenneth Pobo

Kenneth Pobo has six full-length collections of poetry and, including Ice And Gaywings, twenty chapbooks. His latest book, from Blue Light Press, is called Bend Of Quiet, and Booking Rooms in the Kuiper Belt is forthcoming from Urban Farmhouse Press. Ken began writing at age fifteen. He teaches creative writing and English at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. He and his partner and two cats enjoy gardening, music, and the Wisconsin Northwoods. Catch Ken’s radio show, Obscure Oldies, on Saturdays from 6:00-8:30 pm EST at WDNR 89.5 FM.

1.
A red doorway of leaves blows open
into a room filled with mourners.
I smell each blackened leaf:
I had forgotten it was September 30th.
His voice must be trapped in the stem
of this red one I put in my pocket.

2.
A few months ago the river was blue-brown.
My friend and I arrived
where lily pads sent white and yellow
blossoms up: floating gazebos. Minnows
tickled the backs of my knees.

The lilies have shriveled into old hands.
Brown water slides toward the city,
bearing acorns. Leaves drop off in wet arms.

3.
I leave the river, pass the junkyard
of apples fallen by the path. River
and leaves: I go to bed.
I hear it is good to mind your dreams.
Mine often smell of soil. I put
the red leaf under my pillow for luck.

Death hides in a corner,
won’t come when called.
Waiting to die for decades,
she wears gray dresses,
no pizazz. At 94 she curses
another day of tea
and horehound candy. In her
nursing home bed she looks
surprised, angry—death
sneaks up, cradles her, tries
to make everything all right.

Gaywings bloom in May and into June,
thin blossoms, shorter than an ankle—
they often call as we walk past. Soon
they’ll be fading—we’ll be back to fulltime
jobs. We bend, admire purple fire
burning between a damp maple leaf
and a fern. Looking pale, we’re shyer
than they. In a week, they’ll come to grief.

We walk around Shannon Lake
in spring. Everything smells wet,
and lazy afternoon light
makes us feel barely awake
till we pick up our pace, get
up close with flowers, the white
bunchberry, the cinnamon
fern under shade-spotty sun.

This lake lacks a dock, no sign
of people breaking up thin
waves with a horsepowered boat.
Alone: isn’t it so fine
to be together here, skin
tingling, no need of a coat?

Up north we sit in Someplace Else:
my friend, the only woman
except for waitresses.
Orange jackets, hunters
talk of last year’s kill, Eagle River’s
upcoming Snowmobile Championship.

A portrait of a deer in the woods
with a woman’s face
hangs above us. Forks, knives,
coffee cups, and painted hooves
fleeing through lichen.

At the bar a drunk swerves
between whiskey and peanuts,
trips out to his car, a deer on its top.
His wife, probably at home,
a wedding picture above the bed:
she in white, he in black.
Orange sky pursuing whatever moves.